Friday, December 19, 2008

Or "Harvard Blows Its Wad"Caroline Kennedy takes her cue as author from Alan Dershowitz, "borrowing" other people's work and calling it original. (You have to be a student at Harvard to be punished for plagiarism, as Kaavya Viswanathan learned the hard way.) Kennedy, it must be admitted, is smarter than Dershowitz: She called her grade-school caliber work an "anthology". Fair enough. And she also had the example of daddy's Profiles in Courage for the 'right' way to pass off another's work as one's own.

Similarly, Wall Street execs, no small number of whom 'studied' at the Harvard Business School, follow the example of their alma mater when taking massive bonuses even though they suck as businessmen.

The Harvard endowment earned 8.6 per cent during the last fiscal year but has since taken a big hit.

Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard’s president, said in a letter to university deans this month that the endowment lost about 22 per cent of its value between June 30 and the end of October, bringing it from $36.8bn to roughly $28.7bn. . . .

The endowment funds about 35 per cent of Harvard’s annual operating budget. The university is preparing for a 30 per cent reduction in its endowment by the end of the year.

Yale's endowment, second largest in the world, has lost 25% of its value. So much for the nation's 'best and brightest'.

Look for some special earmarks — a privileged bailout — directed Harvard's way by Sen. Chuck Schumer (darling of Wall Street, Bernie Madoff, and other money-grubbing, cretinous vermin).

Likewise, look for revelations about Harvard, Yale, and other universities' ties to everybody's favorite whipping-boy conman — Bernie Madoff, who like Gov. Blagojevich, only made the mistake of being excessively brazen in the practice all the nation's money-grubbers were indulging in.